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I think this is my favorite room in the house right now, especially in the morning sunlight with everything blooming outside. (Wallpaper: Graham & Brown Darcy; Paint: Benjamin Moore Castle Gate; couch and chair from consignment store)

About the time I first noticed increasing talk of terrariums, they started showing up in my world at work. First a cute little one on a coworker’s desk. Then, another at another desk. “Where’d you get that little thing?” I asked. “I made it!” “What? How’d you do that?” “Oh, there’s this little shop by my house called Artemisia. They specialize in terrariums.” Of course they do…we’re in Portland so why wouldn’t there already be a boutique in existence that specializes in terrariums? And yes, it’s on the east side. Along with all the best restaurants. I digress.

The next week my friend who sits next to me brought one for her desk. Again, me: “Where’d you get that?” (Apparently I’m very nosy.) “A girlfriend made it for me!” “Oh, it’s super cute.” A couple of weeks later a woman who had been temping as our receptionist/assistant was leaving and one of my other east-side coworkers hands her a little gift. It’s – yep, you guessed it – the goodies to make her own terrarium. Sheesh. These things are all over the place! The other day, I walked into my boss’ office and suddenly she had one on the corner of her desk. Well, that does it! No cute trends is allowed to exist in this world without me being a part of it.

Benjamin Moore’s Silhouette went up on the curved wall in our family room today. Jeff sent me this first picture at work. We love it!

What you can’t see is that the color we did around the dining area and kitchen (BM’s Weimeraner) appears to be having a bad reaction with our floor and the “red” in the room because it took on a very mauve/pink tone that we are just not digging. Luckily, Karl the Painter rocks and has offered to repaint it for us, so we spent part of yesterday trying out some new samples and have narrowed it down to one or two we think will work really well. For the time being, tomorrow he’s on to the garage entry/mudroom area and bathroom just off this room, which will both be painted the same two colors you see here (Cotswald in the mudroom; Silhouette on walls and ceiling of the bathroom).

Okay, well maybe not EVER. And, maybe it ended up being a little more than $300. Still, it was pretty darn worthwhile.

One of our little “top priority” house projects is painting. As in, pretty much every surface of the entire house is in need of a redo. Which is a lot of paint. Along with a lot of sore muscles. But first up is, of course, the dreaded selection of paint colors. It wasn’t all bad – at least I knew one thing: I definitely want a gray-ish theme for the house. (And let me mention that I’ve been a fan of gray tones before gray became the “it” color for paint, shoes, shirts and everything else.) Beyond that, I was clueless.